The announcement by the U.S. attorney's office for the Central District of California caps the criminal case against Toby G. Scammell, a Bay Area man who had been accused of insider trading. A civil action by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission began with an insider trading charge in 2011; a judgment was issued in that case last month.

Prosecutors said he bought call options in Marvel in August 2009 shortly before the deal by Disney was announced. He then sold them after Marvel stock jumped 25%. Scammell made about $192,000 in profit, roughly a 3,000% return, federal authorities said.

Prosecutors said he had learned confidential details of the planned transaction from his girlfriend, who had been working in an externship in Disney's corporate strategy department in the months leading up to the deal.

He used his brother's trading account to acquire more than 650 call options to purchase Marvel stock for $5,465, but he did not inform his brother of his activities, prosecutors said. After the deal was announced, he transferred $100,000 of the profits from his brother's account to hide the trading activity.

Scammell, who is scheduled to be sentenced in July, faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.

New SpaceX video shows its Falcon 9 Reusable rocket launching, hovering and then successfully landing again. The video has gone viral online with more than 2.4 million views as of early Monday afternoon.

HARRISBURG — The State Supreme Court has rejected Attorney General Kathleen Kane's attempt to throw out a grand jury investigation into whether she or someone in her office leaked investigative secrets to a newspaper to discredit critics.

Catasauqua police officer Scott M. Rothrock had already been stabbed once in the chest with a 13-inch butcher knife and was trying to block more thrusts as he lay on his back in a snow bank Feb. 23 in east Allentown.